RE: [ds, sg] tech and scratchbuild questions

Back in the days when I wrote 'serious' software rather than games, I
did some HUD / HDD design work. On of the things I've always remembered
are the rules over the use (or rather non-use) of colours. The golden
rule was that we were never allowed to differentiate between items or
states purely on colour - there always had to be some other visual cue
as well (size, font, additional text etc). For example, if you wanted to
indicate a low fuel state in one of three tanks, you couldn't just
change the colour coding for the tank from green to red - that was
insufficient. You would have had to change the size of the font, print
the word 'LOW' over the tank's display or use some other means of
indication. Apparently colour alone is not a sufficient visual cue. This
was for military aircraft, BTW.

My guess is that the only setting available for future HMDs (Helmet
Mounted Displays - at least that's what we called 'em) would be a
'brightness' setting. Giving each individual the opportunity to muck
about with colour settings is asking for trouble (just look at windows
desktop colour schemes !).

Tony

[ps - I've just been forced to switch to Outlook (ugh). I've ticked the
'use text' box for message formatting, but please shout straight away if
this is coming out in html.]

-----Original Message-----
From: Beth.Fulton@csiro.au [mailto:Beth.Fulton@csiro.au]
Sent: 18 April 2002 10:56
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: [ds, sg] tech and scratchbuild questions

G'day,

First up thanks for the blimp info guys.

Now first up the "what do you think" tech question....

Do you think the computer generated displays in the helmets of the
future
(are they called huds or something??) will be customisable colour wise?
So
maybe you could have "standard", "colour-blind" (various kinds), "grey"
etc
settings or you could have a limited number of settings so it suits you.
Or
do you think it would be stock standard, no-give so you could just grab
anyone's helmet if need be?

I was thinking more for fiction rather than rule reasons, maybe a guy
has
figured out he can detect cammo'ed guys a bit better on setting x,
rather